The "Spiral"So were the 60 years - the height of the space race and the Cold War. At this time the United States had an active project development Dyna Soar, which meant the creation of a hypersonic interceptor manned orbital reconnaissance bomber, the X-20.In response, the Soviet Union decided to create its own aerospace systems. In 1965, the corresponding instruction was given to the experimental design bureau 115 (OKB-115) named Alexander Mikoyan, where the study was headed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinski. The project was called "Spiral". He was to be the main argument for the possibility of war in the Soviet Union in space and from space.

The chosen scheme launch space plane and constructive solutions incorporated Lozino - Lozinsky , have given the project the USSR "Spiral" at a glance:In orbit, can be derived payload 9% of the total weight of the entire systemThe cost of output for each kilogram of cargo was 3.5 times cheaperRapid withdrawal of the orbital plane at any point on the globeLanding in all weather conditionsThe " Spiral" consisted of three main parts: the hypersonic booster aircraft ( GSR) , two-stage rocket booster and the orbital plane (OS). As planned Lozino - Lozinski , booster aircraft to the orbital plane at the back had to take off from the base airfield and accelerate to a speed of about 7500 km / h After reaching a height of 30 kilometers of the orbital plane was separated from the GSR and using a two-stage rocket booster accelerated to orbital velocity ( about 7.9 km / s). After that, the orbital plane went into orbit and performed one of their combat missions : reconnaissance , missile interception space targets " space-space " and the bombing of missiles " space-to- Earth" with a nuclear warhead. At its core, the orbital plane is a true space fighter .The orbital plane of the " spiral ", as well as booster aircraft was piloted . Place the pilot was a separate capsule, which in case of emergency situation was to separate and save the life of the pilot even in space .Closure of the " Spiral"Development of the project "Spiral" was in full swing, and in the second half of the 1970s , scientists led by Gleb Lozino - Lozinsky planned to begin flights fully manned aerospace systems "Spiral" . The case remained for small - to approve the draft in the top leadership of the USSR. But the minister of defense of the Soviet Union Andrei Grechko in the early 70s , instead approve the project "Spiral" , threw out all the documentation on it in the bin and said : "Imagination , we will not deal with ." Project of the USSR "Spiral" was closed.

The "Spiral"So were the 60 years - the height of the space race and the Cold War. At this time the United States had an active project development Dyna Soar, which meant the creation of a hypersonic interceptor manned orbital reconnaissance bomber, the X-20.In response, the Soviet Union decided to create its own aerospace systems. In 1965, the corresponding instruction was given to the experimental design bureau 115 (OKB-115) named Alexander Mikoyan, where the study was headed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinski. The project was called "Spiral". He was to be the main argument for the possibility of war in the Soviet Union in space and from space.

The chosen scheme launch space plane and constructive solutions incorporated Lozino - Lozinsky , have given the project the USSR "Spiral" at a glance:In orbit, can be derived payload 9% of the total weight of the entire systemThe cost of output for each kilogram of cargo was 3.5 times cheaperRapid withdrawal of the orbital plane at any point on the globeLanding in all weather conditionsThe " Spiral" consisted of three main parts: the hypersonic booster aircraft ( GSR) , two-stage rocket booster and the orbital plane (OS). As planned Lozino - Lozinski , booster aircraft to the orbital plane at the back had to take off from the base airfield and accelerate to a speed of about 7500 km / h After reaching a height of 30 kilometers of the orbital plane was separated from the GSR and using a two-stage rocket booster accelerated to orbital velocity ( about 7.9 km / s). After that, the orbital plane went into orbit and performed one of their combat missions : reconnaissance , missile interception space targets " space-space " and the bombing of missiles " space-to- Earth" with a nuclear warhead. At its core, the orbital plane is a true space fighter .The orbital plane of the " spiral ", as well as booster aircraft was piloted . Place the pilot was a separate capsule, which in case of emergency situation was to separate and save the life of the pilot even in space .Closure of the " Spiral"Development of the project "Spiral" was in full swing, and in the second half of the 1970s , scientists led by Gleb Lozino - Lozinsky planned to begin flights fully manned aerospace systems "Spiral" . The case remained for small - to approve the draft in the top leadership of the USSR. But the minister of defense of the Soviet Union Andrei Grechko in the early 70s , instead approve the project "Spiral" , threw out all the documentation on it in the bin and said : "Imagination , we will not deal with ." Project of the USSR "Spiral" was closed.

Now that's the spirit! Thank you for posting. I didn't know many of the details regarding this Spiral project.

It seems we are back in the days of "lifting bodies" again, since the Space Shuttle and Buran became a distant memory. I need to see if I can somehow get into the Sierra Nevada Corporation, but in spite of my education I have no experience. Those small companies usually don't look for people with little experience...

That's amazing that they were thinking of a two-stage booster system, and the orbiter. Combined plane and rocket. That is an unusual configuration. At 7500 km/h that already is significantly faster (and higher) than the X-15 (5000 km/h).

Although having basically the same mission, Dyna-Soar and Spiral were radically different vehicles. For example:

While the X-20 Dyna-Soar was designed for launch atop a conventional expendable rocket such as the Titan III-C or Saturn I, Soviet engineers opted for a midair launch scheme for Spiral. Known as "50 / 50", the idea was that the spaceplane and a liquid fuel booster stage would be launched at high altitude from the back of a large, airbreathing mothership travelling at hypersonic speeds. The mothership was to have been built by the Tupolev Design Bureau (OKB-156) and utilize many of the same technologies developed for the Tu-144 supersonic transport and the Sukhoi T-4 Mach 3 bomber. It was never built.

Dyna-Soar was designed as a lifting body, while Spiral was a conventional delta that featured an innovative variable-dihedral wing. During launch and reentry, these were folded upward at 60 degrees. After dropping to subsonic speeds post-reentry, the pilot lowered the wings into the horizontal position, giving the spaceplane better re-entry and flight characteristics.

Spiral was built to allow for a powered landing and go-around maneuver in case of a missed landing approach. An air intake for a single Kolesov turbojet was mounted beneath the central vertical stabilizer. This was protected during launch and re-entry by a clamshell door which opened at subsonic speeds. By comparison, Dyna-Soar was designed primarily for a once-off, unpowered deadstick landing.

High temperature superalloy metals such as niobium, molybdenum, tungsten and rene 41 were to have been used in the heatshield structure of the X-20. Spiral was to have been protected by what Soviet engineers termed "scale-plate armour": niobium alloy ВН5АП and molybdenum disilicide plated steel plates mounted on articulated ceramic bearings to allow for thermal expansion during reentry. Several BOR (Russian acronym for Unpiloted Orbital Rocketplane) craft were flown to test this concept.

In the event of a booster explosion or in-flight emergency, the crew compartment of Spiral was designed to separate from the rest of the vehicle and parachute to earth like a conventional ballistic capsule; this could be done at any point in the flight. Such an escape crew capsule was also considered for Dyna-Soar, but American engineers eventually opted for a solid-fuel escape rocket that would kick the spaceplane away from an exploding booster, hopefully saving both pilot and spacecraft.

Much like the Space Shuttle, Dyna-Soar was designed with a small payload bay behind the pressurized crew module. This could be used for lofting small satellites, carrying surveillance equipment, weapons or even an extra crewmember in a pop-in cockpit. Spiral, on the other hand, was intended to carry only its pilot.

Both Dyna-Soar and Spiral were designed to land on skids. The landing skids on Dyna-Soar were designed to deploy from insulated doors on the underside of the vehicle, like a conventional aircraft. Soviet engineers designed the landing skids on Spiral to deploy from a set of doors on the sides of the fuselage just above and ahead of the wings.

I wonder how they planned to propel the space plane past X-15 speeds, with air-breathing engines, and about the mating and separation of the rocket booster - having to tackle many of the same problems that we've discussed earlier. It's worth revisiting the planned flight mission, one phase at a time.

Spiral was built to allow for a powered landing and go-around maneuver in case of a missed landing approach. An air intake for a single Kolesov turbojet was mounted beneath the central vertical stabilizer. This was protected during launch and re-entry by a clamshell door which opened at subsonic speeds. By comparison, Dyna-Soar was designed primarily for a once-off, unpowered deadstick landing.

A small detail that called my attention. The craft was capable of powered descent (final approach). A single small turbojet placed on the leeside next to the vertical stabilizer. Normally from an aerodynamic perspective, one would avoid that location due to turbulence and the possibly a fully separated turbulent boundary layer creating havoc with the airflow to the rear engine. Yet the need to protect the engine during re-entry overrides that decision....

Given that form follows function, what is it about the design that calls for a bifurcated envelope? (Or, to phrase it more "rustically", why does it look like a bum?)

What you have there is a soft pressure vessel that provides it's own structural rigidity. Pressure vessels depend of tension around the "hoop" to maintain their walls straight, and thus provide the rigidity required. That means that it has to at least resemble a cylinder of some sort. The "crack in the bum" actually provides a great deal of structural integrity, and allows for "hoop tension" to form along the perimeter of the envelope. This is basic structural mechanics.

Now at the same time, modern airship designs want to take advantage of their own shape to provide some lift. The so called lifting body concept. If you looks at rival designs, some envelopes do not have the crack, or have an outer envelope covering the crack

The oval shape is to provide the maximum lifting surface possible, since the aerodynamic pressure distribution around the envelope is your only source of lift. The "split hot-dog bun" envelope, is in my mind a compromise between structural rigidity and pressure vessel requirements and aerodynamic requirements for lift.

A surprising finding for me today. I just stumbled into this article below. It happens that Aviation Week [and Space Technology] magazine is already over 100 years old this year, having first published in 1916.

More pleasantly I also discovered that some of the first articles in that magazine were also discussing a "revival" of lighter than aircraft, and made cavalier forecasts of lighter than air aeronautical developments in Europe and the United States.

The article follows up various AW articles that were printed throughout the 20th C, including a 1929 article on the The British State Airship R101, The 1937 Hindenburg tragedy, a 1959 article of the deployment of the first Goodyear airborne early warning airships, and a 2010 article on the Northrop Grumman long endurance multi-intelligence vehicle (LEMV).

Nice little resource. I plan on fetching all the articles, and I may decide to post here or in the histopriacal section with a link....

Quote

A journalist predicted in the February 1, 1917 issue of Aviation Week, that great progress would be made in developments of lighter-than-air craft in the U.S., and similar predictions for Europe were foretold.

All types of lighter-than-air aircraft would be designed and built by one company, the Connecticut Aircraft Co. Its qualification? It recently received an order from the Signal Corp for an observation balloon.

It had a capacity of 30,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. The main gas bag was built of double textured rubberized cotton, cemented and sewn together

So this is the third approach, from Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin, which I have seen besides Space X's and Sierra Nevada Corp's attempts at re-usable manned launch systems.

Blue Origin's approach is similar to Space X's "retro-rocket" booster design, but the intersting here is how the design reveals the design struggle withing the engineering teams.

The project calls for a re-usable rocket booster which will kand under it's own power after a brief suborbital flight (i.e. up and down"). The booster is carrying a manned capsule, in this case to a maximum altitude of 104 km the "lowest" threshold of space, as it were.

But the interesting thing is that the booster and the capsule separate (I'm not exacly sure when), and then as the booster is a mere 3600 ft above ground it re-fires to very suddenly decelerate it's path toward the Earth. The launch site near the town of Van Horn in Western Texas is at about 4000 ft above sea level (yes Texas has mountains and high plateaus!), so this means the rocket is re-ignited around 7600 ft of altitude above sea level. To put it in context, the altitude of Denver is 5280ft and Mexico City is around 7380 ft of altitude above the ocean.

The result is a rocket devoid of capsule which approaches the ground very, very fast and at the very last moment, it suddenly slows to a very slow soft landing a 4.8 mph. The video is really impressive, if indeed the video playback I'm looking at is in real-time. This also explains why you can't land with the capsule attached! Imagine you are at the tip of the rocket in the last few seconds before touchdown...

The Storm (Буря) (an frticle of "350"-350 La-350, La-X) — the world's first supersonic two-stage Intercontinental cruise missile land-based, developed in the mid 1950-ies in the USSR in the OKB-301 Lavochkin under the leadership of S. A.

In 1954 the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a decision to establish an unmanned Intercontinental means of delivery of nuclear warheads with ranges of at least 8,000 km. That decision provided for the research and design work in parallel in two competing directions: Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and Intercontinental cruise missiles (MD).

Rocket "Storm" was the implementation of the second direction, the contractor which was assigned to the OKB-301 (now "NPO im. S. A. Lavochkin"), and chief designer — N. S. Chernyakov.

The propulsion system (rocket engine) first stage has been developed in OKB-2, under the leadership of chief designer A. M. Isayev.

Ramjet engine the primary stage was designed at OKB-670 under the leadership of M. M. Bondaryuk.

The design of the rocket was designed to fly on Intercontinental range (up to 8 000 km), at altitudes up to 25 km, with marches 3.2 speed—Mach 3.3, with the implementation of the anti-aircraft maneuvers in a given time moment. The starting weight of the rocket 95 t, weight of a martial step 33 tons, the weight of the payload (warhead) of 2.35 T.

During the development of the rocket "the Tempest" for the first time in USSR was mastered a number of technical and technological innovations:

Under the flight program rocket engines on the first stage starts with the launcher vertically, gradually turns in horizontal flight and at a height of 17,500 m accelerates to speed M≈3, when you turn on the engine of a martial step, and the steps. Further cruise missile goes to the target at a height of 17÷18 km commands astronavigational management system, at the approach to the goal of gaining a height of 25 km (anti-aircraft maneuver), and dive-bombing target. Flight to maximum range together with the rise and dispersal lasts about 2.5 hours.

All were built 19 year old copies of "Storm" (factory № 18 in Kuibyshev and plant No. 301 in Moscow), and they were tested. The last four missiles are used in order to create the optical reconnaissance and target for anti-aircraft missile defense complex long-range "Distance," developed by OKB-301. The outbreak was the preparation of serialproduction of the CD was cancelled. The story of "Storm" has ended .

late to the show, as usual. I have no filght techno-skills, just a compuer jocky that gothired in to do "systems" then bailed out ca. 1990.

RE The Shuttle:

as a prior participant (just a small cog I assure you), I have a few comments:

The O-Ring crap is/was a smoke-screen, here was no actual proof, only conjecture. They needed a sacrificial goat, fast,and decided upon MT o-rings. An independent assesment by ex-players published in Aviation Week & Space Technology recommended that investigators look into 1) the "drilling of extra holes" along the joining flanges of solid propellant boosters (thus weakening the joints)2) the photos clearly showing a forward mounting strut from the shuttle to the fuel tanks breaking looseand perforating the liquid fuel tank, and the resulting jet of liquid fuel

The Shuttle was a good design, especailly for the day. A bit overly large. Nasa wanted a pick-up truck, and the Pentagon demanded a Semi-Truck and got it. Actaully it was a "pretty damn good design" with all the different contactors not playing nice together- so damn good the Soviets were copying it until their economy crashed.

The shuttle was good for what it was, and it should have been a stepping stone, to a better system and permanentstations built at the LaGrange points. The Shuttle program WAS NOT READY for civilian scientist ride-alongs, but the public image being projected demanded it. But the budgets were cut to the bone, cheap-a$$ bean-counters were put in charge, and the KB's (kabooms) happened as a direct result. That doomed it all. To the bean-counters, budget mattered more than lives.

If you don't agree, read the transcripts where the astronauts were directly forbidden from looking for any tiledamage. Lawyers call that culpable deniabilty.

BTW, in "the biz" everything was so compartmentalized, we never knew wtf we were working on, so we went toAvionics Week, found out who was flying where for what, and figured it out. Their photos were the only way we ever sawthe platforms fly.

ooohhhh "Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser mini-shuttle" <<<< --- that should have been the next step!

perhaps it will, yet...

I am intrigued that no-one is pursuing rail-launch from an Andes Mountain in order to avoid the dreaded "muti-stage rockets" .

Acclaimed By The Crowned Heads of EuropePurveyor of Patent Remedies, Snake Oil, Cleaning Supplies, Dry Goods, and Picture PostcardsOffering Unwanted Advice for All Occasions and Providing Useless Items to the Gentry Since 1822

The Storm (Буря) (an frticle of "350"-350 La-350, La-X) — the world's first supersonic two-stage Intercontinental cruise missile land-based, developed in the mid 1950-ies in the USSR in the OKB-301 Lavochkin under the leadership of S. A.

(snip)

Want one! Want one!*

You can't help but be impressed by some of the innovative Soviet/Russian designs, especially in the area of aerospace; for example, I do think if Korolev hadn't died it would have been a very close run race to the moon.

late to the show, as usual. I have no filght techno-skills, just a compuer jocky that gothired in to do "systems" then bailed out ca. 1990.

RE The Shuttle:

as a prior participant (just a small cog I assure you), I have a few comments:

(snip)

Impressive to (virtually) meet someone involved in that programme! I hadn't heard the strut theory for that disaster. But yes, it was the lack of dollars that compromised that programme. If they had just stuck with the original design with a winged first stage things might have been different (although those tiles were always going to be its Achilles heel). Of course, it's recently been announced that AFRL are looking again at a two stage to orbit vehicle with presumably a winged first stage using the SABRE engine http://www.space.com/32115-skylon-space-plane-engines-air-force-vehicle.html#sthash.YfkJHzdV.ANlzVOmt.dpuf.

Yours,Miranda.

*At the recent Malvern Flea Market there was a RR jet engine for sale, £1500 including delivery. The family wouldn't let me buy it...

The Storm (Буря) (an frticle of "350"-350 La-350, La-X) — the world's first supersonic two-stage Intercontinental cruise missile land-based, developed in the mid 1950-ies in the USSR in the OKB-301 Lavochkin under the leadership of S. A.

(snip)

Want one! Want one!*

You can't help but be impressed by some of the innovative Soviet/Russian designs, especially in the area of aerospace; for example, I do think if Korolev hadn't died it would have been a very close run race to the moon.

late to the show, as usual. I have no filght techno-skills, just a compuer jocky that gothired in to do "systems" then bailed out ca. 1990.

RE The Shuttle:

as a prior participant (just a small cog I assure you), I have a few comments:

(snip)

Impressive to (virtually) meet someone involved in that programme! I hadn't heard the strut theory for that disaster. But yes, it was the lack of dollars that compromised that programme. If they had just stuck with the original design with a winged first stage things might have been different (although those tiles were always going to be its Achilles heel). Of course, it's recently been announced that AFRL are looking again at a two stage to orbit vehicle with presumably a winged first stage using the SABRE engine http://www.space.com/32115-skylon-space-plane-engines-air-force-vehicle.html#sthash.YfkJHzdV.ANlzVOmt.dpuf.

Yours,Miranda.

*At the recent Malvern Flea Market there was a RR jet engine for sale, £1500 including delivery. The family wouldn't let me buy it...

Makes me want to dust-off my links to the Govmt's. job application website. I used to apply often but I wonder what the availability is if any, and whether my now outdated and meager software knowledge will be an obstacle. The AFRL and the AFOSR were the entities who gave us contracts at our university.

I'm glad they're looking at the SABRE again, but they're repeating, basically the work done by Reaction Engines. "With lead feet," is what I would characterize the approach. The American AF people will test the engine concept all over again before committing to anything. In that sense, it'd be so much better if a private company like Space X or Sierra Nevada had taken up the challenge. The process would be much faster.

On the other hand, despite my financial problems, I'm not at odds with the Federal Govt. So there is no obstacle at filing aoplications. Generally the big obstacle is they want a PhD and/or experience. And the longer they take to repeat the SABRE performance, the more people they're likely to hire...

On the other hand, despite my financial problems, I'm not at odds with the Federal Govt. So there is no obstacle at filing aoplications. Generally the big obstacle is they want a PhD and/or experience. And the longer they take to repeat the SABRE performance, the more people they're likely to hire...

Time to take a look at USAJOBS.com again.

Go for it J!

Remove the dates from your degrees and papers, then the resume will get past the HR morons scrutiny and stand a chance to get in the hands of the hiring managers. If you can make some contacts with the local acedemics, that could be a plus. Shoot , maybe you could talk your way into a spot at the U ?

On the other hand, despite my financial problems, I'm not at odds with the Federal Govt. So there is no obstacle at filing aoplications. Generally the big obstacle is they want a PhD and/or experience. And the longer they take to repeat the SABRE performance, the more people they're likely to hire...

Time to take a look at USAJOBS.com again.

Go for it J!

Remove the dates from your degrees and papers, then the resume will get past the HR morons scrutiny and stand a chance to get in the hands of the hiring managers. If you can make some contacts with the local acedemics, that could be a plus. Shoot , maybe you could talk your way into a spot at the U ?

yhs

Yeah. I'm afraid I will have to erase the dates. The mid 2000s no longer look like a fresh date. Don't like to omit information, but that is also what I had to do to get my current job (That is greatly downgrade my business experience!! Who would have thought that "less is more"? ).

The hiring people are a bunch of f&*^%$. They really are full of misconceptions, prejudices and downright superstition when it comes to choosing people to interview. Sometimes I get the impression that a computer running a virtual Ouija board actually determines the interview candidates. Either that, or the "money under the table" system is in full-effect, but nobody wants to believe that would happen....

To be honest with you, the university has always been my default go-to place, due to the simple fact that that is the one place I can actually go talk with human beings *before* the interview. I have gotten in the past the most promising interviews on campus. But sadly, I have have found former professors and faculty members themselves to be less than helpful - if perhaps sympathetic to my situation. In fact I get to see one of my graduate advisors on a weekly basis at my place of employment. But I don't want sympathy, because I can't eat that.

My impression is that at least some of the the faculty members "live in their own little world." What I need is faculty members not involved with internal student research but rather with external contracts. Private industry contracts may be more productive, as small companies are moree willing to take risks. There used to be a lot more of that in the late 1990s, but for Aerospace contracts tended to be with the military (Air Force, sometimes Navy), whereas the Mechanical Engineering Dept. would have more contracts with large private companies such as General Motors.

The other approach is to try to get an on-campus job doing anything -at all. That opens the list of jobs because some applications are restricted to university students and personnel. If I had a better paying job that afforded me more free time, maybe I'd go back an train myself in something else, just to get my foot back in the door.

The other approach is to try to get "through the back door," as the govt. works with many subcontractors. A small research company - I thought - would always be ideal - or so I thought. This was my approach back in 2009-10. When aerospace contracts went down I was looking for GPS related work at labs in local colleges (systems for monitoring alignment of rocket sled rails in the desert), and then the Navy started hiring computer programmers and acoustic specialists - all along the East Coast, in Virginia and surroundings. I tried unsuccessfully to get through those types endeavors, by way of research laboratories - because they wanted programmers skilled in old defunct structured languages, such as Fortran

A more crazy idea: a customer at my workplace suggested I try getting in through the airline industry, as there is always some corporate liaison who has to deal with airplane makers.

Sometimes it looks so daunting. It's very difficult not to get depressed. I'm tired of counting years.

In the news right now: the Airlander 10 has been unveiled at Cardington Airfield, Bedfordshire, and christened the "Martha Gwyn." The joined dual-envelope lifting body design makes this an "airship-airplane hybrid."

BBC:

Quote

British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) has spent the past nine years developing the prototype in the Cardington hangar after the US Army ran out of money to develop it as a surveillance machine.

Tests on its engines, generators and systems were completed last week, and tests on ground systems will now be carried out outside of the hangar.

The Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstration Programme (RLV-TD) not only develops a proof of concept re-entry hypersonic glider but the project will also help develop a SCRAMJET powered air-breathing rocket:

I guess lately I haven't been playing much attention to new aerospace developments. I was reading the BBC's articles on India's latest launch of multiple satellites in a single vehicle

Ah My Dear J -being a suspicious sort I have to wonder, how often does one want to send up satellites in similar, nearby, or the same orbit?thus leading me to wonder if it is a poorly disguised development of MIRV tech...

I guess lately I haven't been playing much attention to new aerospace developments. I was reading the BBC's articles on India's latest launch of multiple satellites in a single vehicle

Ah My Dear J -being a suspicious sort I have to wonder, how often does one want to send up satellites in similar, nearby, or the same orbit?thus leading me to wonder if it is a poorly disguised development of MIRV tech...

love the small shuttle, tho :-)

yhsprof ( wondering) marvel

Yeah. It's all related isn't it? I can't seem to get away from that . Military leads to commercials and viceversa. Well, I don't know the particulars of their system (since I just read about it through the news last week), but theirs is not the only system like that. I imagine the last stahe boosts to a higher orbit than MIRV's, and there are hypergolic or otherwise types of rockets that will reduce each individual payload's orbit in order to space the satellites apart (I'm guessing here, I'm not an Orbital Mechanics guy).

Here in our ow hometown of Austin we have a new company called Firefly (yes I have applied for a job - with negative response), started by a former associate of Elon Musk at SpaceX. Their speciality *will* be multiple (micro) satellite launch systems modelled after multiple warhead missiles.

~ ~ ~

My mind had been occupied as of late as I applied for and got an interview for an internship with a small division of a very large company (Flight Safety Intl.) which trains pilots. The Austin offices are part of an engineering division which makes mirrors for flight the flight simulators they make (my interview resulted in a somewhat yet not definitively negative response). Even giving my work for free I get rejected in this case, on account I'm not an expert in optics and materials science. I estimate I have only one more shot at this job if I could just find a way to marry CAD / vector drafting software to an optics program called Zemax (so they can estimate optical aberrations in real time just by changing mirror positions). Also I need to find a substitute for glass which is lighter but can be polished like glass...

I hear Mr. Brassbeard may know something about 3D modelling? I wonder if that could be helpful?

October 4 1957 was launched into orbit the first artificial Earth satellite, the Soviet spacecraft - Sputnik-1.

Of course - 60th anniversary next year. It's amazing just how far we have come since then, from the first artificial satellite to contemplating the first interstellar mission ('Breakthrough Starshot'). Anyway, there really should be some short of global commemoration of the 60th next year.

Yesterday, Pilot, Engineer, Astronaut and Senator John H Glenn, has passed away after health complications. He was the third man to orbit Earth after Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, and the 4th man to go into space after Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom's suborbital flights

I have written an obituary at the Off Topic section, and I will probably write something in this thread about early space exploration and the Mercury Programme in the next few days.